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Recordings

Graham Johnson’s complete Schubert and Schumann songs series for Hyperion are landmarks in the history of recorded music. Now this indefatigable performer and scholar turns to the songs and vocal works of Brahms. Hyperion is delighted to present t ...» More

Accompanied by Eugene Asti, Sarah Connolly sings songs by Haydn, Brahms, Hahn, Korngold and Weill. Her distinctive, intelligent, warm, bright-sounding mezzo-soprano will be enjoyed by her growing 'army' of fans in this rich, romantic repertoire.» More

Graham Johnson is both mastermind and pianist in this series of Brahms’s complete songs. Volume 4 presents the bass-baritone Robert Holl, famed for his weighty interpretations of this repertoire. Included are all songs of Op 94, as well as the Vie ...» More

Alastair Miles—internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading basses—explores some gems of the Lieder repertoire from Hugo Wolf and Johannes Brahms, ably accompanied by pianist Marie-Nöelle Kendall.» More

Who exactly Therese is in this Keller poem is not certain; once again Hugo Wolf set the same text without any connection with a female name (as ‘Du milchjunger Knab’) while making it clear he thoroughly disliked Brahms’s version. Wolf’s is clearly superior in terms of accentuation and attention to poetic detail, but it is inferior in terms of charm, and this is reflected in hundreds of performances of the Brahms on the concert platform for every one of the Wolf, admittedly seldom in the contralto key of its original tonality (sopranos love it equally). Hans Pfitzner also composed a setting of these words (Op 33 No 3), but like the Wolf, this teases the young man in love with an older woman to an almost cruel extent. Calf-love can be very funny of course, and Wolf and Pfitzner are both extremely adept at Schadenfreude, but Brahms (who was himself a beardless late-developer) sees more warmth and affection in the lyric: the older woman is attracted to the younger man at the same time as teasing him. It is for this reason that every time I play this song I hear it as a prophecy of the love of the Marschallin for her younger lover Oktavian in Der Rosenkavalier (1912). Richard Strauss gives Marie-Therese a tone of voice when addressing her beloved ‘Quinquin’ that would not exactly be out of place in this song—neither is her name of course!

The opening five-bar introduction-ritornello with upbeat (marked con anima and dubbed the ‘Teresa theme’ by Sams) is a test for every pianist because its fluid triplets encompass subtle shades of shaping and inflection (amusement, tenderness) that require far more than the prosaic ‘rit …’ written towards the end of it. With the entry of the voice we encounter not exactly a real vocal melody, and not exactly a recitative, but something between the two: when shaping this it has to avoid sounding like a set-piece lecture—it has all the flexibility of something said half-reprovingly, half-flirtatiously. (Brahms was all set to revise the vocal line of this passage but was dissuaded from doing so by Elisabet von Herzogenberg.) There are two verses in this vein, the second accompanied in quavers. The mysterious final verse of the poem is marked ‘etwas gehalten’—thus to be sung slower than the rest of the song. The words ‘Eine Meermuschel liegt’ are sung as a descant to the piano’s restatement of the Teresa theme in octaves with off-beat interjections in the bass.

One cannot help feeling that the cabinet of the mysterious cousin (‘Auf dem Schrank meiner Bas’’) is the result of straining to find a rhyme for the final ‘etwas!’. Keller later altered these lines to describe a snail-shell lying in the grass (‘Gras’). This rhyme seems equally unlikely, and it seems a real pity to have lost the sea-shell and the mysterious sound of the sea that instructs the young man about the eternal ebb and flow of love, and the deep resonances of the eternal feminine. Brahms benefits from the earlier version. The octaves in the pianist’s left hand hint at hidden depths of understanding, and the postlude is another statement of the ‘Teresa’ theme with syncopations that pull gently at the heartstrings. A fine performance of this song, despite the fact that the scenario is far from clear (who on earth is that cabinet-owning cousin?), can still produce a frisson of delight in the concert hall.

This is one of the great and most famous of all Brahms songs. The idea of lying in the grass on a summer’s day, silently enraptured beneath the canopy of cloud and sky, has also been marvellously caught by Vaughan Williams, in his Silent Noon, who must surely have had this Brahms song in mind when he tackled the similarly large and wide-open canvas half painted for him by Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s words. Both songs attempt to depict silence and stillness in music, a paradox and thus a real challenge. In Feldeinsamkeit stately F major chords, mezzo staccato but slowly rising within a haze of pedal, are underpinned by low Fs in ongoing dotted rhythm. This gives a sense of movement to those clouds way above, travelling at the speed of dreams, without disturbing the stasis at ground level. The vocal line ascends the stave in crotchets, elemental arpeggios of tonic then dominant harmony, but it soon takes off into wafting quavers that describe the singer’s gaze travelling far up into the distance—‘nach oben, nach oben’. Without the composer needing to alter very much, even the sound of chirping crickets is incorporated into the huge overall picture. We are aware of the singer drinking everything in through the eyes while being utterly still. At the eloquent vocal mordent at the end of the verse (on ‘umwoben’) we may well imagine someone stretching sensually in the noonday heat, as if wishing to weave him- or herself into the texture of the cosmic landscape; this emotion is a less eroticized version of Ganymede’s need to embrace God-in-Nature in Goethe’s poem—this parallel with Brahms is clearer in Wolf’s infinitely spacious setting of Ganymed than in Schubert’s.

The second musical verse begins as if we might be expecting a strophic song but a strict strophic construction would not have allowed Brahms the extraordinary excursion into D flat major that he has reserved for entering a world of dreams (‘wie schöne stille Träume’) with portals painted in the deepest and most sumptuous blue, a colour that one can almost see in hearing this passage. After this, the switch into the C major reserved for the repeat of the word ‘Träume’ is to arrive into a heavenly clearing, absolved of accidentals and healed of pain, where anything seems possible. The poet’s thoughts have turned to death or something like it—those realms explored by Rückert and Mahler in the song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. The line ‘Mir ist, als ob ich längst gestorben bin’ is set as something apart; for these words with just a hint of something ominous, singers usually allow themselves the flexibility and rubato of a recitative. But then (as if to say ‘who can possibly think of dark shadows when there is so much sunlight in which to rejoice?’) the music rises out off those darker realms and wafts once more into the ‘ew’ge Räume’ of the stratosphere. Admirers of Michael Tippett will remember the ending of that remarkable cantata Boyhood’s End (W H Hudson) as another instance of the narrator lying flat on his back in the sun while communing with the skies above until he seems to be ‘floating in that immense shining void’.

Hermann Allmers’ refusal to be moved by this music, or to be even slightly grateful to Brahms for this setting (and it is this song that has assured him of whatever immortality he may possess) seems obstinate and philistine. But it is an indication of the wide gulf that often exists between poets and composers in terms of what they regard as appropriate music (if any at all) for lyrics that were designed to be perfectly sufficient unto themselves.

Max Kalbeck was a member of the Brahms inner circle. There was no one quite like him in the history of the Lied: he was a musicologist (born in Breslau) who wrote the biography Johannes Brahms (still unsurpassed in detail, and published in eight volumes) as well as being capable of more than decent poetry (the text of Nachtwandler was later printed in the volume Nächte, 1878). The position that Kalbeck occupied in music and letters was thus an unusual one, and he became a prolific critic and writer of articles for the leading Viennese newspapers.

Brahms’s music veers between major and minor thirds and sixths, the light and shade of sleep and dreams, and the opening of this beautifully crafted song bears some resemblance to the famous Wiegenlied Op 49 No 4. It is very likely that the text was written with Brahms in mind and as such it is to some extent a coded communication between two male friends who understood each other well. To crack the code is difficult, but Elisabet von Herzogenberg, sometimes frighteningly perspicacious, seems to have realized that something was unedifying about these verses that contrast frustration and fulfilment. One might imagine that Brahms himself was sleep-walking as he made the rounds of the streets of Vienna, so wrapped up was he in his music and creativity. But there were those professional ladies of the night who might attempt to wake the sleeping genius as he passed by. This poem says that those who dare wake the sleepwalker will themselves be responsible for his fall from grace—that he was managing perfectly well in his private world of grief and yearnings until someone insisted that he should be aroused (and that word may be interpreted in both its meanings). If a great mind with a great creative spirit is lured into a world of dark nocturnal realities, it is not his fault. And of course the poem can also be read as a caution to anyone (including the incautious biographer) from burrowing too far underneath the surface at the risk of disturbing the idealistic and beauty-filled world a genius may safely inhabit without any loss of dignity or reputation. If this is applied to Brahms (and who knows what confidences passed between composer and poet as they became closer friends) it paints him as someone noble and unworldly who takes no responsibility for behaving in a shabby manner from time to time—it is not his nature that is at fault, but those who have awakened him, the dreamer, in an inappropriate manner. Handed on a plate to the composer by his much younger disciple, this poem is a kind of ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ that ascribes the emergence of the composer’s perfectly understandable physical urges to the selfishness of women who do not know when to leave matters alone. And hey presto!—Kalbeck’s hero remains unsullied, more sinned against than sinning. In a misogynistic world where Eve is to blame for Adam’s fall, this Nachtwandler might apply to the entire altruistic tribe of great artists who would be much more productive in their elevated dream-state, if only women would allow them to be.

The first two of the song’s three verses are presented in strophic manner; the third verse begins by adapting the vocal line to the tune of what has been the accompaniment, and then there is a gradual build-up of momentum through the repeated line ‘Wie vom Licht des Vollmonds trunken’ which then leads to the crucial ‘Weh’ den Lippen, die ihn riefen!’ (also repeated), a mild kind of curse on those who disturb the sleepwalker with their siren call. This haunting and enigmatic little song, probably more beautiful if one fails to understand the poem, ends with a repeat of the Vorspiel.

This is the composer’s only Theodor Storm setting, a surprise in that Storm was a North German whose modesty and probity, as well as his friendship with Klaus Groth—the composer’s good friend and fellow Hamburger—might well have encouraged a closer relationship with Brahms. If that was not to be, it is still astonishing that only this little poem was set to music, fine lines though they are in terms of atmosphere and concision.

This is an exceedingly well crafted song, short though it may be. Everything derives from the words, as should be the case—the resounding tread of the of the narrator in the left-hand staccato octaves, the dull echo somehow implied by the intervening rests in a piece of music, the swirling mists (‘Brauende Nebel’) depicted by right-hand chords that are suddenly legato after so much else has been staccato. The implied counterpoint between the vocal and bass lines turns the screw of tension as the imitative phrases become nearer to each other and the sense of loss and loneliness becomes increasingly claustrophobic. The musical form of the four two-line strophes is AABA where B is elongated by word-repetition and is followed by a three-bar Zwischenspiel. The final appearance of A is modified by a dislocating, but supremely expressive, change to 9/8 leading up to the final cadence. This is the kind of song one might imagine, after cursory acquaintance, anyone could have written; but it has the skill of Brahms in his prime written all over it, and art conceals art in almost every bar.

Kalbeck believed that this song was already written in 1873—at the time that Brahms was working on the other Felix Schumann settings. This idea is dismissed by most scholars but it may not be as ridiculous as it sounds—it seems entirely possible that Brahms would have set all three poems at the same time. On the other hand, by 1878 Felix’s deteriorating health might have encouraged the composer to set another text to raise the grievously ill man’s spirits, a song that was unfortunately clearly incomplete when the young poet died. The song took a number of years to come to print, and Brahms places it before an extended slow and serious song (the Schenkendorff setting Todessehnen) to add a measure of contrast to the opus number as a whole.

After two bars of piano introduction that serve as a rallying call, the water imagery of the poem gives rise to restless arpeggio figurations that continue more or less throughout the piece. These are supported by a strong bass line, sometimes in octaves, sometimes in dotted rhythms, sometimes in semiquavers that overflow from the right hand into the left—all designed to propel the music forward in a bravura evocation of foaming romantic excitement. This is the kind of poem that it is more or less impossible to illustrate in detail—the composer-illustrator must paint with a broad brush—nevertheless the song of the water nixies is depicted in euphonious thirds between voice and piano (bars 13–17) and a change to E flat major is reserved for verse 3 and a brief idyllic moment (bars 29–34) where the most heavenly of distant places (‘die seligste Ferne’) becomes an oasis of calm in the midst of the F sharp major tumult of swirling energy. The music for the first and last verses of the poem is identical. There are certain songs by Brahms that owe a great deal to Schubert, but here we have an example of a work in the Mendelssohn style, characterized by the moto perpetuo energy favoured by the North German school. The poet’s parents, Robert and Clara Schumann, sometimes wrote songs in this manner, but the most characteristic touch recalling Robert is to be heard in the frantic syncopations between the hands of the postlude—a reminder of the opening of Schumann’s Geibel setting Sehnsucht Op 51 No 1.

The composer had already set four Schenkendorf love poems for his Op 63 in 1874, and here he chooses a metaphysical text by the same poet who was more or less a contemporary of Schubert and who died not much older than that composer. Mention of Schubert is almost always apposite when discussing Brahms’s lieder, and one of the earlier composer’s most powerful songs comes to mind here, the Novalis Nachthymne D687. Todessehnen shares the transcendental nature of that masterpiece (also its two-part structure linked by a faster transitional section), albeit from a much more conventionally religious viewpoint. Thanks to a pious upbringing Brahms knew more about the Bible than any other composer—and believed it less than most. Thus it is not the religious aspect of the poem that interests him but rather the chance to express his innate pessimism and his genuine longing for release from a burden of emotional pain that he carried around with him all his life. His contemporaries noticed this and some of them classified it as a shortcoming; an acquaintance, Mosenthal, jokingly accused Brahms to his face of being far too ready to sing ‘Das Grab ist meine Freude’ (‘The grave is my joy’). Reactions to this composer’s music—and there are those who would reply unequivocally in the negative to the question Aimez-vous Brahms?—have always depended on the listener’s ability, or lack of it, to live with this aspect of the composer’s creative personality.

The lack of piano introduction is taken by Eric Sams to indicate the song’s seriousness—‘the emotion can no longer be suppressed’. The solemn incantation of the vocal line (it is hardly a melody) and right-hand minims offset by stately left-hand quavers suggest a pilgrim’s chorale in slow motion. Friedländer notes the rare appearance in Brahms’s work of an augmented chord under ‘meiner Seele’, as if to underline (and undermine) the composer’s own slim chances of salvation. The music is heavy and portentous, as if the accompaniment were attempting to shoulder an impossibly heavy burden while being crushed by the vocal line. Thus ends the first strophe, and there is no happier outcome for the second which ends with the word ‘Schmerz’. The depth of the original key, as performed here, makes something almost sumptuous, at least in musical terms, of this emotional cul-de-sac.

The poem’s third strophe occasions a transitional passage marked etwas bewegter, where syncopations in the piano-writing signify the stirrings of hope. The final two verses occasion a change from three sharps in the minor key to six sharps in the major. The marking is Langsam, but a change of time-signature to 3/4 and a lightening of texture (upwardly wafting quavers, spare left-hand chords with a staccato third beat) bring serenity, sunlight, exaltation—albeit of a muted kind. Sams notes here ‘a Biblical instrumentation of harp and psaltery’. The melody of ‘Hör es, Vater in der Höhe’ reappears, three years later, as a clarinet solo in the Andante of the Second Piano Concerto. There was a side of the agnostic Brahms that might have preferred to leave the song in the doldrums of the earlier verses, but he was too good a composer to ignore an opportunity for a maggiore passage of a kind that might offer musical, if not personal, redemption. (Although Love as a redemptive power on earth is something Brahms did believe in—cf. the last of the Vier ernste Gesänge). It is notable that the unequivocal quietus of the tonic chord, F sharp major, is avoided until the very end of the song when heaven is attained, metaphorically at least, in the final three bars.